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Puerto Ricans Continue Mass Protests as Gov. Rosselló Says He Will Not Seek Re-election

HeadlineJul 22, 2019

Amid massive ongoing protests in Puerto Rico, Governor Ricardo Rosselló announced Sunday he was resigning as head of the ruling New Progressive Party and that he would not seek re-election next year. He stopped short of resigning as governor despite the demands of protesters, who will take to the streets again today in the largest demonstrations yet since a text message scandal rocked Puerto Rico a week and a half ago. A massive leak of text messages showed Governor Rosselló exchanging sexist, homophobic and profane text messages with government officials, calling former New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito a “whore,” mocking victims of Hurricane Maria and joking about shooting San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz. This is a protester in San Juan speaking Sunday.

Rafael Bernabe: “His resignation is inevitable. The question is whether he’s going to make us wait another week, another two weeks, or how many more weeks he’s going to force us to continue on the streets. But there’s no question of whether he’s going to have to resign; he has to resign, because Puerto Rico is hitting the streets, and Puerto Rico will continue to hit the streets. And once we get this governor out, we must continue the fight, because we still have to deal with the fiscal control board, the austerity policies, all the measures they want to impose on us to deal with this untenable debt. And we have to transfer this energy to those struggles.”

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